


Interstitial

by Sholio



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Between Seasons/Series, Developing Relationship, Drunk Sex, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:20:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26988124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: They jostled around each other for a while, bouncing off each other's sharp and broken edges—and then they started tofit, like puzzle pieces that couldn't click together until they found just the right angle.
Relationships: Owen Harper/Ianto Jones
Comments: 13
Kudos: 52
Collections: Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	Interstitial

**Author's Note:**

  * For [still_lycoris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_lycoris/gifts).



It was strange how Jack's absence affected the team, in ways Owen never would have expected. He'd never have thought that Jack leaving would have brought them closer together. If anything, he would have expected it to fracture them further, in the same way they had seemed to fracture, before, during Jack's brief absences. 

But they didn't.

Instead, they jostled around each other for a while, bouncing off each other's sharp and broken edges—and then they started to _fit_ , like puzzle pieces that couldn't click together until they found just the right angle.

Gwen stepped up as leader, taking the job because no one else wanted it, and then worked her arse off at it, staying late and coming in early and struggling to catch up to speed on everything Jack had made look effortless. Tosh, genius that she was, cobbled together a remote monitor for Rift activity so no one had to spend the night at the Hub, and they arranged a rota, with the duty person keeping the Rift monitor at home.

Ianto and Owen started taking turns walking Tosh home at night. Ianto had always been attentive to their needs before, but he was doubly so now, making sure they had coffee and tea and lunch, putting a little wrapped sweet on the edge of everyone's desk in the mornings like he thought it was a bloody pillow mint.

Not to say that there weren't issues.

Tosh cried a lot, but always in private, coming in to work with swollen eyes. Owen and Ianto had a blazing row in the middle of the Hub, one good loud getting-it-out yelling match that had the girls pretending they had something to do elsewhere, and then avoided each other for a day or so, and then things were ... not okay, maybe, but a lot easier after that.

Owen found himself drifting up to the alien-plant greenhouse when Ianto was in there watering things, just hanging out a little, he wasn't sure why. It was peaceful, a nice break from the perpetual chaos or at least the endless to-do list down on the main level of the Hub.

"I could leave if you want to be alone," Ianto said, one of the first times he came up.

"No, I don't," Owen said, and Ianto never asked again.

Ianto was just ... _easy_ to be around. There was a restfulness to him, a sort of quiet calm to the way Ianto went about everything that was soothing to Owen's angry, jittery, coffee-dark soul.

Because he was lonely, damn it. He missed Jack, missed Diane, missed having Gwen's legs wrapped around him but not enough to try to rekindle their affair; he recognized, when he was honest with himself, that it had been destructive for both of them.

He couldn't help seeing a little of his own loneliness reflected in the rest of them ... but especially in Ianto, who looked so surprised when the remaining three of them—Owen, Tosh, and Gwen—invited him along for drinks. And he didn't want to see anyone in their little group, what was left of it, feeling that way anymore.

Because Ianto was alone too, wasn't he? Had always been a little apart. Maybe if they'd done more from the start, _noticed_ him more, they'd not have had the Lisa thing happen—but no sense trying to rewrite the past. God, if he could do that, the things he'd change, starting with Katie ...

They could only move forward, closing up, as best they could, the gap that had been left when Jack tore out the tentpole of their world.

Owen started trying to have his reports in on time. He'd hedged and procrastinated and made a right arse of himself with Jack, made a game of it really, but with Gwen it just deepened the exhausted line between her brows. It wasn't fun anymore. He tried to have them on her desk first thing. Tosh ... he could do with being a little kinder to Tosh. He didn't like seeing that she'd been crying. There was some part of him still torn open like a papercut from Tosh looking inside all their heads, and he hadn't even noticed it was there until he did, and then he didn't notice it was gone until it closed up, at some point after Jack walked out of their lives—like someone had knit it together with superglue so seamlessly that there was no trace left anymore. He came in one morning with pastries for just the two of them, and Tosh reciprocated by staying late to update the software on his med scanner; twice as accurate and twice as fast, she promised.

Ianto ...

It had never been easy with Ianto, until it was. And he still couldn't quite get over it, that for all those times he and Ianto had bounced off each other, leaving bruises and blood, all they really needed was to relax around each other.

Owen didn't recognize at first what Ianto was doing when he drifted down into the medbay while Owen was working down there. Didn't recognize that it was Ianto's version of Owen's greenhouse visits, until Owen turned around and looked at Ianto sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, and asked "You need something?" —only to see Ianto jerk out of staring vaguely at nothing and stand up.

"No, no, it's fine," Ianto said, and he left before Owen could tell him that he could come back, if he wanted to.

He did come back, though. Just sat down there sometimes, staring into space, while Owen did paperwork and arranged tools.

So yeah, they were all each other's papercuts but also each other's balm, and Owen found himself taking a closer look at their mental and physical health. It was his job, after all, but he'd always been the cleanup crew more than the maintenance man. Now he was trying harder to be proactive about it. He took headache pills up to Gwen's office, and he contemplated trying to force some sleep aids or possibly antidepressants down Ianto, until it occurred to him that there was an easier way, a very East End sort of way. What Ianto really needed was for someone to take him out and get him good and wasted.

So he did. Swooped in on Ianto and caught a shoulder of that ridiculous but also ridiculously good-looking suit jacket. Owen was always a little weak for a sharp-dressed bloke.

"Oi. Tea-boy. Call it a day; we're skiving off."

"We are, now?" Ianto said, with an arched eyebrow that wasn't exactly no. "It's the middle of the afternoon."

But he also looked worn to the bone. They were all working themselves to exhaustion, Ianto maybe worse than the rest of them, staying late and coming in early, filling his hours with paperwork that even he had to find grindingly soul-killing after a while.

"Gwen!" Owen called up. "Make a short day of it, love! We're knocking off earlyy."

"You're not the boss of me, Owen," Gwen called down, but she was smiling, and she didn't say no.

He went out with Ianto into what turned out to be a drizzling rain turning to fluffy fat snowflakes and then melting as soon as it hit the ground. Slushing. It was slushing.

"Bloody Cardiff," Owen said, and Ianto actually grinned.

They walked to a pub rather than trying to drive in the mess. Owen picked a quiet place with a lot of dark wood and shadowy corners—maybe not entirely Ianto's scene (whatever Ianto's scene was) but the sort of place where they could find a quiet corner and get some food and a couple of pints. Which they did.

"So is there a reason why you dragged me out of there early, or ...?" Ianto asked, while they waited for their food.

"Because I'm tired of drinking alone."

"Oh, is that it," Ianto said, and there was a smile, one of those little bright smiles he had: a quick glimmer of something warm and halfway to playful.

God, Owen thought, how had he just ... _not seen_ Ianto for so long? But he hadn't, none of them had. Ianto had been quiet and helpful, a cup of coffee on the edge of a desk, a wastebin emptied, a lab coat neatly folded where Owen had left it in a rumpled heap. Ianto hadn't _wanted_ them to see more than that, but there was more, there always had been.

"How are you holding up?" Ianto asked, and Owen was jolted out of his own thoughts.

"Eh what?"

"Just asking," Ianto said, turning pink. It was, Owen thought—God help him—dreadfully cute. "Look, if everything with Suzie taught us nothing, it's that we need to talk to someone about the things we see, the things we _do_ , and it's ... either group therapy and a lot of Retcon—"

"Followed by painting the walls with blood, right," Owen said. "Or talking to each other. God." He reached for his glass. "You can't even start with this a couple pints in? I'm not drunk enough for this yet."

"But you're ..." Ianto hesitated, seeming to feel his way around the edges of it. "... Okay?"

"Okay? Me? Mate, I'm not even in the outermost edge of the football pitch of okay. I tried to get a Weevil to eat me; what do _you_ think?"

"I'm sorry," Ianto said.

He actually sounded like he _was_ sorry; that was the hell of it. Owen signaled for more drinks, and when the bar girl showed up, asked her to bring some whiskey shots round too.

"Owen, I didn't come out to get completely pissed at four in the afternoon," Ianto complained as the shots clicked down on the table in front of them.

"Yeah? Well, I did. Price of admission, mate."

Owen was a firm believer in the therapeutic properties of getting completely rat-arsed even in utter defiance of the fact that it had never helped him in particular. Ianto downed a shot and shuddered.

"Not much of a drinking man, are you?"

"I'm starting to vaguely hate you," Ianto said.

Owen slugged back a shot and shrugged. "You wanted to know about my issues. Welcome to an up close and personal look."

"Drinking in the afternoon?"

"Among other things," Owen said, and tried a lager chaser. Ugh. He was going to have such a hangover from all of this.

*

They didn't end up talking about anything important after all, but they were half helping hold each other up and laughing when they left the pub, in the full winter dark with the world filling up with slushy rain giving over to snow and then going back to rain.

"This is a terrible town," Owen complained. "Watch it, puddle there, half frozen—"

They went back to Ianto's flat because it was closer. It didn't occur to Owen that he'd never been there until they stumbled in. He found his way to a stool at the kitchen counter, while Ianto clanked around in the closet, hanging things up.

Ianto's flat had a strangely unlived-in look, as if a student lived here and had merely taken the furnishings that came with the place. It wasn't that it was impeccably tidy; that, he'd expected. It was the lack of personality. There was a time, early on, when Owen would have said that Ianto didn't have much of that—but he knew now how wrong he was; Ianto was brimming over with personality, it was just that it was quiet and deep, the sort of thing you had to learn how to see. Owen would have expected that Ianto's flat would have been an opportunity to learn a little more about him. Instead, it looked as if Ianto used it as a place to sleep, and rarely even that.

"My head hurts," Ianto complained. He brushed at his damp hair, trying to brush out snowflakes that had all melted by now; all he did was fluff it up. "I think I could have a cup; you?"

"Sure, mate," Owen said, and laid his head down on his arms on the counter.

He raised his head when Ianto set a steaming mug in front of him. Ianto had stripped out of his jacket, waistcoat and tie; he was down to just the shirt, and with his head still spinning, Owen was caught off guard by how enticing that actually was, like seeing a bird who normally buttoned all the way up to her chin with the top few buttons undone.

Ianto slung himself down onto the stool next to Owen, loose and more relaxed than Owen had, perhaps, ever seen him. It made Owen think about how young Ianto really was, and how much of that lifetime had been spent with Torchwood.

"How's the tea?" Ianto asked. "You don't drink it much at the Hub, so I don't know how you take it. I put in a little sugar."

Owen took a cautious sip and found that it had been spiked with a considerable amount of rum. "Definitely a pick-me-up." His head was starting to ache, too, the euphoria of the drink fading into its inevitable depressive aftermath. The rum helped cut it a bit.

It was quiet in here; for all that Ianto's flat was on whatever passed for a main drag in Cardiff, Owen had grown up on streets far louder. And snow hushed things, that he knew too. Outside the windows, it was coming down in thick flakes. Wouldn't last 'til morning, but for now it cast a certain spell over the place.

"How are you, really?" Ianto asked quietly.

Owen looked up from his tea, startled. He'd taken Ianto out to try to ... well, coax a little of the _gray_ out of his face, maybe. He hadn't signed up to be psychoanalyzed himself. "Fine."

"Owen ..."

"We've been over this, right? We're all fucking head cases at Torchwood." He was angry at himself, all of a sudden, and by extension, at Ianto. This had been a bad idea. He wasn't sure what it could ever lead to. Nothing good, nothing that wouldn't wreck the fragile truce they'd established at work. He started to step off the stool, and it turned into an uncontrolled slide. Ianto caught him by the arm. Tea slopped over his hand. "Shit!"

"Sorry," Ianto said. It came out in a breathless gasp. "I'll just—sorry. Tea towel. Hang on."

This would have been a perfect time to make a break for it, but Owen stayed, although he mustered up a scowl when Ianto came back with a tea towel dipped under the tap. "Yeah, better get that out before it sets," he muttered as Ianto dabbed at his sleeve. "This jersey cost me five quid at the charity shop."

"Owen ..."

"Why'd we come back here, anyway?" He watched Ianto cleaning up his sleeve and hand with the edge of the towel, dark head bowed over it, soft little dabs of the damp towel.

"Because you're in no state to walk home," Ianto said, not looking up at him.

"Going to offer me the couch, are you?"

"Well, if you want it."

Owen jerked his arm away. "You mad at me?"

Ianto looked up at him, blue eyes wide and startled. "Why would I be?"

"I don't know," he said, frustrated with himself, with Ianto, with the whole damn world. "I wanted to make it better. I'm bad at that. _Fuck."_

He jumped down off the stool—stumbled, his legs almost going out from under him. Ianto caught him again, and at least this time he didn't have a cup of tea in hand, though Ianto still had the tea towel; it was a lukewarm lump in the hand tangled up in Owen's sleeve. Ianto's other hand was under his elbow.

For a moment they just looked at each other, and then Owen, being the only one who had a hand free at the moment, hooked his hand around the back of Ianto's neck and pulled him forward and kissed him.

They'd been working up to it, he felt in that instant, since Ianto had walked into the Hub for the very first time, and Owen had taken a sarcastic crack at him and Ianto, rather than being upset or intimidated, had given him one of those looks, the ones that were amused and a little snide and somehow entertained and maybe a little bit fond—

He let Ianto go, and fell back, his arse hitting the seat of the stool.

Ianto gasped a little. 

"How about now?" Owen said.

Ianto made a faint sound, and dropped the tea towel on the floor.

If Owen had pictured something here like a movie scene, the two of them tearing off their clothes on the way to the bed, hands all over each other—that wasn't what it was. They shed clothing all over the floor, but it wasn't a frantic lust-fueled run, more like two tired and drunk blokes trying to undress themselves without falling over. They were naked by the time they got under Ianto's duvet, anyway, with the lights in the bedroom off and snow floating down outside the window.

Owen ran a hand down Ianto's shoulder, the muscular curve of it. Tea-boy had a body under that suit; he'd always known that. He felt Ianto shiver.

"God, Owen, I miss him," Ianto whispered.

"Me bloody too." Owen leaned cautiously forward, kissed him on the high edge of a cheekbone, under the sweep of his lashes. And then, because he felt like Ianto needed to hear it, and because it was true— "But that's not all this is."

"Owen ..." Ianto opened his eyes, startling blue. "I'm not a one-night-stand person."

"I don't really think I am anymore." He bloody well had been, before Diane—or had he? He'd dealt with losing Katie by flinging himself into a series of shags that didn't mean anything because he said they didn't. But he still tangled up anyway. Still was friendly with Gwen, wasn't he? And would have been with Suzie, if he'd had half a chance. He didn't really forget any of them. Maybe the only person he was ever fooling was himself.

He kissed Ianto lightly, a gloss of lips. Ianto gave a shuddering sigh, and dropped his head to Owen's shoulder, and that .... _did_ things to him. It was the kind of thing that let him know this wasn't just going to be a quick shag; there was something underneath. 

Ianto traced light fingers over the scar on Owen's shoulder. Owen jerked at the electric zing of feeling, not entirely good but not bad either.

"Hurts?" Ianto whispered.

"Not really," Owen murmured back. "Just tender."

Ianto pressed his lips to it. There was a shiver of feeling that went down to Owen's core, especially when Ianto's lips swept over Owen's collarbone and onto his throat.

He might as well have known that tea-boy was a goddamn sweet lover; that figured, it just did. Owen curled a hand around the back of Ianto's neck and rolled him over, getting on top for once.

"Hi," Ianto murmured as Owen kissed him, and he was smiling.

"Hi there," Owen murmured back, and kissed that smile.

He knew then that he was a little bit gone and always would be, the way he still was for Gwen, the way he was for Jack. And Diane, and Katie. You didn't get inside someone and let it go. You carried it around with you forever.

Ianto, he thought, was exactly the same way. He bit lightly at Ianto's lips, tasting the alcohol and tea, the tang of coffee. Ianto wasn't one to love and let go; it was why Jack's loss was hitting him so hard. Owen cupped a hand around the back of Ianto's neck and kissed him, kissing him thoroughly, lips and the corners of his mouth, the edge of his jaw where it went all the way back to the base of his ear.

"Jesus, Owen," Ianto said into his neck.

"Does that mean stop? Because I don't take cues well ..."

"No, it doesn't mean stop," Ianto said, and turned his face into Owen's shoulder, and Owen had a moment there when he just held him, one arm around Ianto's incongruously muscle-padded shoulders. God. They were two right messes, weren't they?

And then he kissed the top of Ianto's ear, kissed his way down, and Ianto shuddered and pulled him in close, and the bed wasn't as wide as Owen's but it was more than big enough for what they had in mind.

*

Owen drifted slowly awake, arms and legs tangled up in Ianto. The snow was still falling.

He struggled carefully out of bed, and went to the window, looked down on the street a storey below. He was right, the snow was melting as it hit the ground. But it was still lovely, in its way.

Owen was painfully thirsty and his head ached. He went into the kitchen, where there was still a light turned low. He filled a glass of water, drank it all down with a couple of paracetamol he found in a drawer. He refilled the glass and took it back to the bedroom along with some pills in the palm of his hand.

"Ugh," Ianto mumbled when Owen nudged him with a bare knee and then his whole thigh. "Ugh. What?"

"This," Owen murmured, and fed him paracetamol and half the glass of water. He stretched to put the glass on the bedside table, and then slid back into bed. Ianto pressed a kiss to the side of his neck. Owen rolled over and found a comfortable position, with Ianto's arm over his waist, his hips pressed into Ianto's lean thighs.

There was snow still falling outside the window. Owen leaned back and Ianto nestled closer and turned the side of his face into the curve of Owen's neck, and Owen ... _lost it,_ a little, at the tenderness of that.

"I need to hang up my shirt," Ianto muttered abruptly, and Owen laughed a little. He rolled over and put a hand across Ianto's back, stopping him when Ianto stirred and tried to get up.

"Ugh ... Owen, gerroff ..."

"It'll still be there in the morning."

"Yes, with wrinkles in it."

But he subsided after that one attempt to get up, especially when Owen pressed the heel of his hand into Ianto's spine, dragging it slowly up to Ianto's shoulder blades and the back of his neck. Ianto sighed, his breath ghosting across Owen's collarbone, and he loosened out into sleep. One of his hands curled around, palm pressed lightly over the puckered, half-healed bullet scar on Owen's shoulder.

Owen pressed back against him, and slowly, inch by inch, relaxed into Ianto's grasp, going and going and ... gone.


End file.
